Worst battery powered device ever, my SP3...

[LaramieJoe]

The Surface Pro 3 is by far the worst battery powered computing device that I have ever had. Every time that I pick it up, the battery is depleted and it needs to be charged. It doesn't matter if the SP3 has just been laying around doing nothing since last it was charged, the battery is empty!

And this is my second SP3 since I broke the screen on the earlier one and the insurance payed me a new one. The other one was just as bad... every time I picked it up, the first thing I had to do was charge it.

I ran the powercfg with the /batteryreport, /sleepstudy, and /energy switches, but those files do not tell me much. Some error is reported, "CPU Utilizationrocessor utilization is high", but it doesn't tell me anything but that CPU utilization is high. Brilliant!

No, I find that I use the SP3 less and less, since I have to charge it every time I pick it up. I can just as well use my mobile to surf the web, FB, whatever, that one happily runs on battery for a whole day and more, no problem. Maybe Android manages power better than W10...

Thanks for listening.

I totally agree with you. And frankly, I am sick of it. Such a gorgeous machine completely marred by pathetic battery life.

 

[Fabian]

I am on to my second SP3 i7/256 W10 pro machine now, the first one was replaced for a brand new one due to cracked screen, and they have both been equally bad with battery life. My experience is the same as the OP's. This is either a case of very bad engineering, or very bad production... Jay Marino, you mentioned complete overhaul. Would you care to tell us more? Exactly what was it you did?

 

[OppfinnarJocke]

I have been complaining about bad bad battery life for a long time now... in this forum, and on MS forums, and by calls to MS, and now finally it all seems to blow up right in the face of MS! It turns out that I have the flaky (and I guess cheap!) SIMPLO batteries!

(I was going to put in some links here, but just google "surface pro 3 battery" and you'll find plenty very recent postings on this)

This explains it all. This is why some people have good battery life out of their SP3's, while others like me get only a few hours, at the most.

My battery report contains this:

Installed batteries
Information about each currently installed battery
BATTERY 1
NAME X898289
MANUFACTURER SIMPLO
SERIAL NUMBER 1186144004
CHEMISTRY LION
DESIGN CAPACITY mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY mWh
CYCLE COUNT 64​

There is not even any capacity listed, I guess it is too low to even measure!
Now I have to deal with getting the device replaced... *sigh*

 

[jnjroach]

Fix has been released

Surface Pro 3 Battery Fix has been released in today's Firmware Update

 

[JackieInCo]

Fix has been released

Surface Pro 3 Battery Fix has been released in today's Firmware Update

I applied the fix on my SP3 and the battery life seemed to be improved on it's first battery run. Only problem is, I got the warning that I had one hour left at about 10-30% or so and then the computer just shut off.

I read the notes on this on how it will take several uses to get the battery capacity to show the correct data so I can understand this.

Previously, I would only get 3-4 hrs use on one charge. Today, my battery bar app showed 5. It was showing I would get about 8-9 before it shut off. I have about 36 cycles on this battery.

 

[efinimazda]

according to my battery report I only 3.11 hours on avg. I typically use a second primary monitor too.

 

[garryknight]

Lots of people are currently experiencing battery problems. See this thread at Microsoft Answers to get an idea of the scale of the problem.

answers.microsoft.com/en-us/surface/forum/surfpro3-surfhardware/surface-pro-3-with-lgc-lgc-battery-degradation/13d03fbe-1edd-489f-bd0a-2c07ff615128?page=1&msgId=4aa5d71e-61d6-49de-ae7f-412b5f17cd02

 

[Haldi]

i do not have a SIMPLO Battery, and yet my Batterylife is always bad.

BATTERY 1
NAME X883815
MANUFACTURER LGC-LGC
SERIAL NUMBER 1160780292
CHEMISTRY LION
DESIGN CAPACITY mWh
FULL CHARGE CAPACITY mWh
CYCLE COUNT 273

But i do have to admit that i moslty use my device with 100% Screen brightness and while playing Music....
But common.... some people get 9h and i reach 3-4 ?



P.S Yeah Design Capacity is broken because i have a German windows... they still didnt manage to fix this in over 3 years...
There was a custom fix one, but i frogot where it was or how it worked ^^

 

[Haldi]

Because i wanted to kn0w how long my Battery Lasts i've written a small script that writes down Batterylevel every 10 Minutes.
Then i've used Caffeine to prevent the PC from going into sleep. Let my Tablet idle around with 100% Screen Brightness.

1457:100
1507:100
1517:100
1527:93
1537:91
1547:89
1557:87
1607:85
1617:83
1627:81
1637:79
1647:77
1657:75
1707:73
1717:71
1727:69
1737:67
1747:65
1757:62
1807:60
1817:58
1827:56
1837:54
1847:52
1857:50
1907:47
1917:46
1927:44
1937:43
1947:41
1957:40
2007:39
2017:37
2027:34
2037:32
2047:30
2057:28
2107:26
2117:20
2127:19
2137:17
2147:16
2157:14
2207:13
2217:11
2227:10
2237:8


From 15:00 to 22:40 is 7h40min
Just the screen! almost no CPU load or network or nothing.

 

[Steven Du Bois]

Return it as faulty then. Mine gets 9-10 hours just great.

However it does sound like to me, your issue is windows 10, not the surface pro 3. Windows 10 is very much an issue for many regarding battery life, however recent updates (i'm on fast track insider ring so can't say if it is for insiders, or everyone) are supposed to have solved this. I certainly don't have the issues you state above, which up until a few weeks ago, i also encountered. EAsiest solution is to just shut it down instead of putting it to sleep.

Or just install windows 8.1 and have a perfectly functioning computer. But as i say, i've an sp3, with a fully updated insider build of windows 10, and it easily gets 9 hours for my partners typical usage scenario.

As long as I leave the internet off I get 9 hours too...but if you are working online maybe 3 hours...just like a normal laptop...its the processor and the fan...the M processor units do not have this issue...I'd prefer an 8GB ram with an M processor but its not an option with the surface...then again...I really don't want a 12 inch tablet either...I had to go with the pro size just for the RAM...I liked my Surface 3 much more than the pro for size, it just couldn't handle the android emulators...a necessity since the app store is nonexistent for the things I need for study and research...

 

[hughlle]

As long as I leave the internet off I get 9 hours too...but if you are working online maybe 3 hours...just like a normal laptop...its the processor and the fan...the M processor units do not have this issue...I'd prefer an 8GB ram with an M processor but its not an option with the surface...then again...I really don't want a 12 inch tablet either...I had to go with the pro size just for the RAM...I liked my Surface 3 much more than the pro for size, it just couldn't handle the android emulators...a necessity since the app store is nonexistent for the things I need for study and research...

I still get significantly more than 3 hours when on youtube/browsing etc at home.

 

[Johnny365]

I got around 4.5.-5 hours. No where near the 8+ hours people on this forum claim, unless they have BT/Wifi disabled and the screen brightness all the way down.